Operators employ system management solutions to assist in managing multiple computers, from tens of computers to over tens of thousands computers. System management systems can be used to inventory the hardware and software on these computers, install and update software on these computers, collect and distribute custom software packages into manageable groups, provision computers, manage and deploy configuration files, monitor these computers, provision and start/stop/configure virtual guests, and distribute content across multiple geographical sites in an efficient manner. Because of the large numbers of computers that can be managed by the system management solutions, large amounts of information pertaining to the managed computers are generated by these solutions.
To support this large amount of stored information, the system management solution includes a database management system. A database management system is a software system that is used for building, maintaining and accessing a database. There are several database management systems known in the art that can be employed by a systems management solutions (ORACLE™ Database Management System (DBMS), MYSQL™, IBM DB2™, POSTGRESQL™, MICROSOFT SQL™, etc.).
When a new version of the system management server is released, there can be a problem of schema upgrades. If database schema upgrades are not verified, database schema of system management system which was upgraded from older version might have different database schema definitions and content of database tables than database schema which was installed as part of fresh system management system installation. This difference can pose a large problem for operators and support staff of the system management servers because even minor differences can have a severe impact on a system management server functionality, performance, and usability.